Like Father, Like Daughter
by Nova Adams
Summary: Clark struggles with being Superman AND raising a daughter.


Clark started to worry when Larela turned nine.  
  
She had been a relatively normal baby, which was something Lois had been worried about. None of the colors of Kryptonite affected her, except when they were near her daddy. Then she started crying, even when Lois held her. She didn't display superstrength or superspeed, and she didn't show any signs of trying to fly. She regularly got colds and colic, and, when she started to crawl, mashed her fingers in doors and cried about it.  
  
She hated it when Lois smoked, and liked it when Daddy flew around with her. She especially liked his red-and-blue costume, and was very happy using the cape as a blanket. She especially liked it when Jimmy came over to baby-sit and tell her stories about Superman. She didn't like it when either of her parents brought her to the Planet. She would start crying the minute they set foot in the building, and wouldn't stop until they were safely at home.  
  
They learned to live with it. Lois gave up smoking, and Clark stopped using the cape, rationalizing that it just got in the way, anyway. They hired the girl downstairs for a baby-sitter and paid her $7.50 an hour.  
  
John and Martha adored her. Lana Lang, who was natural mother material, offered to be her godmother. The JLA members were bored stiff with Kal-El's fascinating stories about changing diapers, but tried not to show it. What else can you do when the most powerful superhero in the world starts showing you pictures of his daughter? They made jokes about Superman giving Brainiac a "time-out".  
  
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Three-year-olds like to talk. It's a skill they've just discovered, and a surprisingly effective one. They can produce incredible reactions in people just by repeating things their parents told them. Larela was no exception.  
  
They had a very hard time trying to convince her to not talk about her Daddy. The first time Larela saw Superman in action, they were in a crowded department store. A newscast of Superman battling some random evildoer was showing on the screen.  
  
Larela pointed. "That Daddy."  
  
"No, honey, that's not your daddy," Lois said.  
  
"That Daddy."  
  
"Not Daddy."  
  
"That Daddy. My Daddy flying!" Larela announced to everyone passing.  
  
"Look," Lois muttered into her ear. "That is not your daddy. That looks a lot like your daddy, but believe me, it's NOT your daddy."  
  
"Not Daddy?" Larela looked perturbed.  
  
Lois shifted her daughter to her other arm. "You know how when Mommy looks in the mirror, you see Mommy in there, but it's not Mommy? That's what it's like here."  
  
"Oh." Larela thought about this for a while. "Not Daddy."  
  
"That's right, honey," Lois said, relieved. "Not Daddy."  
  
After that, she stopped letting Larela watch the news.  
  
******************************************************************  
  
Eventually, they stopped needing the baby-sitter. Lois found that she could leave Larela in the apartment with a sandwich and some books, and she'd be happy. Clark protested this.  
  
"A five-year-old kid can't take care of herself. What if she chokes on something?"  
  
"So I'll cut up her sandwich for her."  
  
"What if she tries to get a snack and chokes?"  
  
"She won't. She hardly ever even finishes her sandwich."  
  
"What if someone breaks in?"  
  
"Yeah, and Jenny from downstairs would be any help?"  
  
"She could at least call the police."  
  
"Look, you know Larela screams like a banshee at the first sign of trouble."  
  
"What if no one hears her?"  
  
"You'll hear her with your super-hearing. You can come get her."  
  
"If I'm in the middle of a meeting or something? How can I get out of that?"  
  
"You've always managed it pretty well before."  
  
"I had an excuse. I could go cover a story. I won't have an excuse with Larela."  
  
"Say you have to go to the bathroom."  
  
"What if I don't hear her?"  
  
"You can hear Lex Luthor laughing from halfway across the city, but you can't hear your own daughter screaming from one block away?"  
  
It wasn't their first fight, and it was far from their last.  
  
******************************************************************  
  
They divorced when Larela was seven. Lois decided that she was sick of being a mother, and also sick of covering for Clark whenever he dashed off to save the world. Also, getting rid of the ketchup stains on the linoleum had become more important to her than journalistic integrity, and she didn't think that was a positive thing.  
  
The custody agreement was simple. Clark got the apartment and Larela during the week, and Lois got a much nicer apartment and Larela on weekends. Lois got to choose the elementary school, and Clark got to choose the doctor. Clark got to take her to the library, which she liked, and Lois got to take her to gymnastics, which she hated. Clark bought her clothes, and Lois bought her Barbie dolls.  
  
Eventually, Lois got promoted to war correspondent, and "every weekend" turned into "whenever you're in town", which wasn't very often. Clark sent Larela to the Kent farm for the summer, and she came back tan and full of stories about pregnant cats and milking cows. Clark got her a cat, which she named Krypta, and which ran away after six months.  
  
******************************************************************  
  
A few weeks after her ninth birthday, Larela came home crying.  
  
Clark rushed to her aid. "Honey, what's wrong? What happened?"  
  
Larela dropped her backpack on the couch and curled up in a ball. "Nothing."  
  
Clark sat next to her and put his arm around her shoulder. "Tell me what happened."  
  
Larela turned away from him and buried her face in the sofa pillow. "Don't wanna talk about it."  
  
"But I can't do anything if you don't tell me about it," Clark said.  
  
"Don't want you to do anything about it."  
  
"Just tell me what happened, Larela. Maybe I can help you."  
  
Larela got up and looked in the fridge. "Do we have any chocolate ice cream?"  
  
Clark got out a Fudgesicle for her and they sat down at the table. "Now will you tell me about it?"  
  
Larela licked her Fudgesicle. "Lissy Taylor said I can't be friends with her anymore. She says I'm a nerd and I'm a stupid baby. She said--" Larela gulped back tears "--she says she only came to my party because her mom made her, and she never wanted to be friends with me anyway."  
  
Lissy Taylor was the ringleader of the 5th grade girls at Mozelle Elementary. Larela had been skipped ahead a year, and had never been very popular. When Lissy and her friends had come to Larela's birthday party, it had meant a lot to her. She had been hanging out with Lissy and her friends ever since.  
  
"Well, do you know why she said that?" Clark asked, unattuned to the intricacies of elementary school sociology.  
  
"I don't knooooow," Larela wailed, dropping her Fudgesicle on the table and bursting into tears.  
  
Clark carefully disposed of the Fudgesicle and cleaned up the mess. "Do you want me to talk to her mom?"  
  
Larela shook her head. "No. Then she'll hate me."  
  
"Now why would she do that?" Clark asked.  
  
"Cause then her mom would make her be nice to me, but she wouldn't anyway. She'd invite me to her stupid slumber parties and the other girls would all make fun of me when her mom wasn't there." Larela sniffled. "She did that on her birthday, but I thought they were just playing."  
  
Clark felt a sudden surge of hatred for this catty Lissy bitch who had reduced his smart, sweet daughter to tears. Looking into Larela's eyes, he said, "Do you want me to go talk to her?"  
  
Larela shook her head.  
  
"As Superman?" Clark had done this once, to a rather nasty high-school boy who had scared Larela with his motorcycle. It had scared the kid so much that he had actually started attending school.  
  
Larela looked at Clark in sheer horror. "No! She'd figure it out, and besides, it wouldn't work anyway."  
  
After the the initial shock of realizing that when her dad put on his flying suit and went out to fight crime, he was the mysterious "Superman" that most of the boys pretended to be on the playground (this was in the second grade, when kids still pretended to be superheroes), Larela had been surprisingly scrupulous about keeping the secret. Most kids would have rushed out to tell all their friends, thinking it would improve their status, but Larela had grasped the implications of the situation quickly.  
  
"If somebody bad knew, then he could hurt me or Mommy because that would hurt you," Larela had explained to Clark, after Lois sat her down and explained the situation to her. At the time, Clark had been proud of his daughter's steadfastness. Now, he wished she would let him protect her, if only by invoking his name.  
  
Clark sighed. "Well, are you going to report it to the principal? Because you have to do something, you know. Otherwise she'd just going to walk all over you."  
  
Larela shrugged moodily. "I wish I had powers like yours. Then you know what I could do?"  
  
"What?" Clark asked.  
  
"I could WHAM her through a wall, and I could BAM her out of her chair, and I could throw her up over the Daily Planet building and she would never ever EVER come back!" Larela punctuated her diatribe with kicks at the table leg. "Ever. She's such an asshole."  
  
Clark almost fell backward. "Where did you learn that word?"  
  
"From Jimmy."  
  
Clark shook his head. "That's not a very nice word. Don't you ever let me hear you say that again." Larela looked contrite, but Clark knew that she knew she had discovered a powerful weapon, and would most certainly use it on her enemy. 


End file.
